“Honestly, the image took the breath out of my body,” says Rude, 53. “I’ve been blown away by the response.”

But for the performer, seeing the photo shoot and story by Harry James Hanson and Devin Antheus also came with sadness.

For the past year, Rude has been living in Oregon without stable housing. Rude (who prefers the pronouns “they” and “their”) lived in San Francisco from 1988 until 2018. These days, their most consistent housing currently is a women’s shelter in Gresham, just east of Portland, and their truck. Rude has used an Instagram account, @Phatima666, to chronicle their experiences with homelessness.

“I knew how happy I was then, and how I had optimism and strength to do something,” Rude says, choking up. “Life has changed.”

San Francisco drag queen Peaches Christ calls Rude “a legend of the scene whether or not she’s housed. When I moved to San Francisco in the mid ‘90s she was one of the most progressive and edgy queens on the scene. If Phatima is in need of help I hope she knows there’s a chosen family of hers ready and here for her.”

In 2017, Rude left their single resident occupancy unit in San Francisco to marry a man in Philadelphia, returning almost immediately after the wedding.

“I knew my husband for almost 20 years as a friend before I married him,” says Rude. “When I got there, it was very different. I learned he had a violent side.” After a month, they returned to the Bay Area. “I gave up my SRO of seven years and all of a sudden I’m part of the virus of homelessness that is rampant everywhere. When everyone else you know is on the verge of homelessness or treading water to keep from being homeless and not eating, it’s overwhelming.”

Rude says that feeling unsafe in San Francisco shelters is part of what led to the move to Oregon last year.

Rude hasn’t performed in two years due to a combination of exhaustion and many shelters’ 10 p.m. curfews. In Oregon, Rude has been surviving in Oregon on the kindness of friends and Paypal donations. Living in shelters has taken its toll on their health: Rude has lost over a 100 pounds in the last year due to complications from diabetes, which is especially hard to regulate when you do not have access to cooking your own food.

“I know what I need to do in order to correct my health,” says Rude. “It starts with a place to live, which changes simple things like diet and resting. When you’re homeless, you stay in crisis mode.”

Rude says that following the publication of the Vogue.com story, many people reached out via Instagram, including a fan who bought them a stay in a Super 8 motel for two nights.

“I can take a bath here and sleep in a real bed and chill. It’s a ridiculous luxury to sleep in a bed, to take a bath, eat when you want to,” says Rude. “It seems absurd that’s such a luxury, but it’s so needed right now. It happened because of the Vogue article on Instagram. They sent me a beautiful note, ‘please take care.’”

Vogue.com has not responded to The Chronicle’s request for comment, but others are praising Rude’s influence on San Francisco.

"I'm beyond grateful for the space Phatima held for me almost a decade ago as a young queer kid in the city,” says writer Devin Antheus. “It's a tragedy that she, like so many others, has been displaced from the city whose soul she nourished."

Tony Bravo is a Style reporter and frequent contributor to Datebook and Green State. Bravo has been the New York Fashion Week correspondent since 2013 and specializes in stories about the cultural impact of clothing. He is an adjunct instructor at the City College of San Francisco Fashion Department and a fourth-generation San Franciscan.